In Which Editing is Compared to Flower Arranging (Important for Writers)

Every year my Mum throws a lady’s hat tea party. The requirements are simple: cook something fabulous, wear a silly hat, and come lounge about in her garden swilling tea and gossiping for an afternoon.

It was pure propinquity that it happened to fall on mother’s day weekend. I showed up Friday for a mini ode to the Mum and then was set to work Saturday morning before the event.

After 30 odd years my mother has finally determined that she is best getting me to do small artistic fiddly things and leaving the muscle elsewhere. It’s not that I’m delicate. It’s just that compared to her I am, and I don’t like to get dirty. And, frankly, one of the few things I spoil myself with since I became proper earning author is the occasional manicure.

My mother, on the other hand (oh, see what I did there? hand = manicure, oh aren’t I punnish this morning?) is a tomboyish gardener type. She has more energy than that pink bunny and is not in favor of manicures. How she spawned such airy-fairy girly-girl has been a continual mystery to her these thirty years or more.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. So with chairs moved and cooking done, I was put to doing the flower arranging.

I’ve been living in an apartment of some kind or another for simply ages now, without access to her garden, which is amazing, and I had forgotten how much I loved flower arranging. So I guess this is basically a rambling post about that.

In writing news, I’m slaving away on the first rewrite of the second book in the Finishing School series. Editing, quite frankly, is even more dull a subject to blog about than flower arranging. Although, given the cutting, trimming, stripping of excess bits, and putting things in one place and then moving them to another not, in the end, all that dissimilar. And liable, I find, to end just as easily with the author beast damp, confused, but triumphant.

Book News:Soulless Reviews

Ronnie’s take. Alexia Tarabotti: What She Lacks in Soul, She Makes Up for in Awesome.